Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: captain-custard on March 09, 2010, 08:39:06 pm
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im in the uk in mid may if you organise anything at that point
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Shouldn't be a problem :D
Well there you have it, we are now planning for number *12*.
Comments suggestions etc are welcome, as long as you attend ;)
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Sounds good to me. Can you be a bit more exact on the dates Andicirk? Got to fit heading "oop north" for mum's birthday in there too.
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Changed the title to scan better. :p
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cool lets hope its not here
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ive got a wedding to go to around the 15th of may , in the midlands( thats north of watford for C.dekker), im trying to work out now when ill be arriving and leaving so as soon as i know i shall post the info here....
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If the 15th is when you need to be up there, that works for me. We can do an HLP during one of the weekends either side.
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12?????
What happened to the others? I know that being Subspace can disrupt communications, but when I last heard I thought we were on 9 or 10!
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Do a search for HLP London and let me know how many topics turn up :)
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All right you chaps there
I'm coming to UK in mid April, and the physical location of my residence should be close enough to London to warrant a visit in there.
Though I must admit I'm a little bit scared of the thought of having to use British railways.
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They're safe as houses mate.
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They don't move fast enough (when they actually do move) to be dangerous.
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Thanks McCall,
I was already wondering how I should take Dekker's reply. Now I know how to read it actually.
The other thing is: how expensive is ~ 80 km trip with a train?
PM me if you would like to see me there. Preferably well before mid April!
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Mika,
Whereabouts are you staying as I can find out for you at work.
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I approve of this gathering and convey my wholehearted sentiments that you should all enjoy yourselves in my absence.
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I am optimistic that we can reach at least HLP London/UK 15 before October.
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And a BBQ
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The thread title no longer makes sense
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They're context sensitive. :)
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I'll be located close to Stansted. However, the schedule has changed. I won't be there middle April, but on the last week of April.
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Okay, I confirm 26th of April being the first day I'm there. I'll be leaving on 30th, which will likely be a busy day.
Anyone around there by that time?
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26th is my birthday. Plus i've got a very busy fortnight falling either side of it.
I'm afraid I won't be able to attend for that period. Although I strongly encourage others to in my stead.
We need to build those Anglo-American HLP bridges ;)
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Yes I think that would be a wonderful idea!
Despite the fact I'm not from America.
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After-work beers and food in Central London then Andi?
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I is now a soft southerner, drinking weak beer and complaining about having to travel more than afew miles to get anywhere. Seriously though I just moved to Chesham, near Hemel Hempstead (Watford).
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Oops, lost the plot a bit there
Andicirk in mid-May. Check.
Mika end of this month. Roanoke too? Are we meeting in Central London on a school night?
Any other HLP London folks going to be around?
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I can handle mid may. After payday is a definite plus.
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Sorry ive been absent...I can make the may vist...sort that out soon.
The only day i can make Mika's meeting is the Thursday...
...Also...how did Andicirk get renamed "Captain Custard"?
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Afaik that's his multiplayer moniker.
I might just get it to work one day.
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Afaik that's his multiplayer moniker.
I might just get it to work one day.
I got mine working (with a low ping) and captain custard helped me confirm that it was working, but there is never anyone on! :lol:
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Thanks guys, and sorry for not replying before, my traveling plan underwent a drastic change since all flights were canceled in almost all of Europe.
But after returning from a harrowing 3 day trip from Central Europe (this would make a legend of its own), I definitely don't want to inter rail the continent again in the next week. So, due to volcano eruption in Iceland, I cannot guarantee my visit to UK any more. If flights get canceled again, I certainly won't be traveling by a train, and I won't take the risk of getting stuck again, this time in UK.
I'll try to update the status on this thread, but as you probably know Scandinavian air traffic is hit quite hard by the ash cloud and could remain around here for several weeks! I try to get more information and the decision of my travel by tomorrow!
Sorry for this stuff, but bear in mind I have lived last three days at the edge, selecting right schedules, being extremely busy and worried, and including a 36 hour awake period (I can't sleep in moving vehicles). Since the eye response and focusing time seems to be more of order of seconds, it's probably better for me to go to bed.
Signing off
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Well if you can make it, how's Thursday for the meet-up?
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Basically, any day works (after 16.00) if I get to UK. It seems that for tomorrow the airfields in UK seem to be inside the ash zone. How's the train traffic from Stansted to London? I recall it was twice in an hour till midnight if memory serves.
It seems that in order to be sure, I would need to take a land connection. Hello traveling for two days if I decide to do so. I only get to know on Friday what kind of expected flights are available on Sunday, which doesn't sound so good to me. And by Friday, I should already be going towards south if I use the land connection. Never a dull moment it seems.
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Seems that the airports are open on Sunday, so I'll probably get to Heathrow tomorrow, so I get to UK after all.
Please PM me about the meeting place before Thursday.
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Wait. You mean thursday the two-ninth? If this was proposed quicker I could have made it as i'm payed on the two-eight. Unfortunately i'm watching my mates band play at old street.
Good times.
Same thing for immediate friday. For those of you interested in seeing why i'm so DAMN busy, check my facebook frequently for new tagged pictures.
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Yes, 29th, there was a trip rescheduling for me. I said earlier mid-April, but it was postponed to end of April.
Any day on next week is OK for me, not including Friday.
And dang, I'm gonna miss much of the anticipatory celebrations before 1st of May
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Well, unless i can get thursday off, i'll be coming from work so lets say this:
~18:00/6:00pm in the main hall of Charing Cross station, unless you hear from me otherwise
@mika please PM me your mobile
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Hmmm... Thursday.
Maybe. Where are you guys planning to go?
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Dunno. Either the usual or possibly Iron Man 2 at Leicester Square
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Let's see when I get there
Who are participating? Although this might become obvious in a couple of hours.
Anyways, I might be there at 18.30, the course I'm attending seems to stop around 17.00, and it takes about 40 mins to get there by train.
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Argh. . . . . I wish I could go. Just to see a massive Scarlet on screen.
Stupid social life interfering with HLP :mad:
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Okay, I thought I could write here something about my UK trip. So begins the legend this time:
It was a dry and warm Spring evening 2010 Anno Domini when I arrived to Heathrow and continued searching for the bus that would take me closer to unspecified location. After wandering about 20 mins at the arrivals gate in Heathrow I finally realize that despite signs saying "TRAIN STOP", there is also a tunnel to the central bus station. Well, you can't expect everything. I got on the bus causing only a minor incident by walking on the road that wasn't allowed for pedestrians, but by explaining that I was more worried about getting on the bus rather than obeying the rules, the driver accepted me in. The trip went well until the last quarter, when there was a huge traffic congestion at M11 (I guess) at around 23.30(!). How did they manage to do that?
I arrived about one hour late on the unspecified airfield near London and tried to look for the shuttle bus that would take me to an unspecified hotel. I didn't find the bus, nor did I find any placates of its starting platform. I proceeded to ask the airport officials where to find one, but everybody pointed out in different directions. This was the first :wtf: moment, and if you bear with me, it gets better. I spotted a line of about twenty taxis next to the airport and thought "A-ha! That's my ride to hotel then!" Off we go and ask the driver, who replies "No can do, you need to have a reservation number!" The taxi reservation center was filled with people, while there were twenty unoccupied taxis waiting for apparently nothing. That's the point I started to become :hopping:.
Suddenly I started to think that probably the best way to get to the hotel is simply to walk there. As the trip was about 5 kms, it's not that much, though I had about 20 kilograms of luggage with me. Then I proceeded with my inquiries of the exact position of the hotel, saying to the airport personnel that "I'll walk", they clearly didn't believe me, and just hand waved to the general direction of the airfield. :mad: So I started to walk around the airfield, getting blisters at about 2.5 km mark. I also noted that the airport security had noted me and followed me with a car mercifully behind the fence so that I surely couldn't ask them if I'm heading to right direction. Apparently they couldn't believe their eyes that someone's walking around the airport perimeter at 01.00, and needed the long distance driving lights to confirm the sight.
Oh well, at least I wasn't carrying the poster tube. They would have probably interpreted that as a shoulder launched missile and we all know what happens to foreign people security determines to be terrorists. Cursing Brits and sweating like pig, while hoping that I have been walking towards the right direction, I note that the hotel shuttle bus passes me by (actually twice). Since I wasn't next to any kind of bus stop they didn't note me but I'm not sure if it had stopped anyways had I been at the stop either. That, though, confirmed that I'm at least walking to right direction. But I didn't bear very happy thoughts at that point of time, mostly FCUK it, which is like **** it, only worse. I did mention that I don't like football, didn't I?
At that time, I made a second observation: British roads aren't meant to be walked. There is very little extra space on the sides, so one is basically forced to walk on the grass. Nice. At last, I managed to get to the hotel carrying all the stuff and being really sweaty, but at least I got my room about two hours later and quite pissed off. I had a shower and set the wake up to 07.00, allowing the luxurious five hour sleep before the course. The receptionist thought I was crazy, but I have heard that one before.
The following days were a lot more easier, though I continued to note that even at so short distances as 5 km, the British roads are really not meant to be walked, as the clearance between pedestrian and a car is usually measured in centimeters. Oh, and I did see terran emperor at London on Thursday. More about that later, as the returning trip from there to the undisclosed location didn't go as planned.
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So... what happened with Captain Custard?
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I don't know. Captain Custard never showed up there.
Anyways, me and terran emperor went to a bar for a pint or two, then had some Chinese food. We talked about Freespace scene, unfortunately since I don't own a bad ass computer I couldn't comment much about SCP. It is interesting to see so many people are interested in modelling things for games, but there isn't such rush for CAD environments, although I think modelling is even better in CAD. Has probably something to do with games wanting polygons and CAD packages wanting splines.
He also gave me a hint of Doctor Who, that I haven't known existed since the thread in this board, or a picture of a Dalek in some obscure forum. I actually managed to watch a couple of episodes yesterday, and have to admit they have done good job with it. It is a lot more human centered than any other science fiction series I know, which makes it all the more better. The situations seem to be somewhat goofy, but somehow the script seems to pull it off. I have liked a lot of the Doctors played by Tennant and Eccleston, though I haven't watched the earlier episodes of the series. Referring to Doctor Who, Terran Emperor showed a police booth from the Trafalgar Square, an object I didn't even know to exist (the booth I mean). You learn something new every trip.
Oh yeah, I promised to write something about what went wrong when I wanted to get back to Liverpool Street from Embankment. I went to the Underground from Embankment and thought, jolly good the same route back and make no rush about it. Surprisingly, they never told me that the circle line doesn't go to Liverpool street after 22.00, or something like it. :mad: Without a lady who knew the schedules and that I would need to run ( :mad: FCUK!) from some obscure place (Tower Hill?) to Bank, I would have been completely lost. I managed to get to Liverpool Street, and missed the train only by 20 minutes. It is jolly good those Brits write a lot of informational signs everywhere, too bad the content is usually next to useless and it is the important things that you never see. Like the Underground schedules, or at what time of day the don't drive the route any more.
Luckily, there was still one more train to Bishop's Stortford and I managed to get there so I only had a short trip back to hotel, this time I got a taxi immediately after leaving the station without any kind of booking numbers, as would be expected from a civilized society. In the end from the organizational point of view, French and English are not so far from each other as I thought before. Maybe I should make a Boratesque document of travelling abroad and doing stupid things, or filming the stupid things done by the locals. I seem to have a knack in finding exactly those kind of situations. Normally, I wouldn't expect a sixty mile trip to take more than one and a half hours with public transportation, but in UK it needs four as evidenced by going and returning from Stansted to Heathrow.
The only question I have is who might have been that nice blonde who almost missed Roydon in that train to Bishop's Stortford?
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So you experienced the inexplicable time-loss that goes with trying to use our public transport. It is amazing how they eat up the hours withut going very far, isn't it? I'm wondering if it's part of a state scheme to make us think England is bigger than it really is.
Sorry I couldn't make that night. Was busy arranging wedding stuff with the missus-to-be and completely forgot I was supposed to be up in London until TE called me.
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So you experienced the inexplicable time-loss that goes with trying to use our public transport. It is amazing how they eat up the hours withut going very far, isn't it? I'm wondering if it's part of a state scheme to make us think England is bigger than it really is.
Yeah. Using public transport always sounds better until you actually sit in that bus or train. Unfortunately, the company doesn't pay costs associated with excessive taxiing if public transportation is available, though next time in UK I'm really willing to push my luck against the corporate machine.
On the other hand, since I was practically born in a small village, I learned that 1 hour of travelling time = 100 km with a car. I find that whenever I go into a big city the distance in kms doesn't matter at all - and it's weird. I also note that the Underground and Public Transportation inside a city tend to stop every 300 meters, which is a ridiculously short distance to walk and that tends to annoy me to a no end.
No problem about that, wedding is an acceptable excuse. Besides I was delayed by one and a half hours from the original arrival time at that night, thanks (yet again) to British Rail. Missed the Iron Man II because of that I guess.
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Unsticky time.
Let's get the next ball rolling.
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At least the UK has the right size and infrastructure to make widespread public transportation feasible. There's a reason everyone in the US who doesn't live in the middle of a city lives and dies by their cars. :p
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Yeah, you know why no one drives in New York City? Because of all the traffic. :P